A giant portion of grandbaby love. A heaping helping of family and friends. A super serving of faith. A sprinkle of humor. It's my life. And I'm so blessed.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. Thanks for coming! One day I hope my little piece of internet real estate will be home to lots of family photos, pictures of my scrapbook and card art, with some random thoughts and memories posted on a somewhat regular basis. Mostly my world is very predictable, but occasionally some excitement will find me, so visit often. Who knows what useful (or useless) information you may find here.

cathyb

Saturday, October 5, 2013

President Obama is rockin’ the shutdown thing. He is stirrin’ up the stink pot. Like a rock star at a concert, he stirs his
followers into a frenzy. A frenzy of
fury against the Republican party. The
angrier and more frustrated Americans get because of the shutdown
inconveniences, the stronger the frenzy will grow. Seems like kind of a sweet deal for
him!! At every turn, he points fingers
and lays blame. And I’d be willing to
bet that he’s enjoying every minute of it.

Elaborating on the fact that the FBI, Homeland Security,
CIA, (et al) are short-staffed, makes us even more susceptible to terrorist
attacks. Which means that, God forbid,
if there IS some kind of terrorist event, the Republicans will be blamed for
that as well. Everything that is a bad
thing in the eyes of Democrats is the irrefutable fault of the Republican
Party. I suppose they get points for
having Their Guy in office, and maybe that gives them the upper hand with The
Media, (since we all know who runs the media anyway…) but do they honestly
think that their enemies The Republicans don’t feel the same way about
them? That everything is their fault? For
every rock slung in one direction, there’s an equally nasty rock slung from the
other.

I don’t understand why the shutdown is the sole fault of the
Republicans. Mr. Obama said today on his
lunch outing that “this could be over today”.
Yeah. It could be over today if
he gets HIS way. Why is it okay for the
Dems to stand their ground, but the Repubs are the bad guys for not
caving?

All that said, to be fair, I’m quite certain that if the
roles were reversed, with a Republican-seated president, things would probably
play out the same way. The Rep president
would be blaming the shutdown on the Dems.
It’s all in the spin. I get that.

Reading articles and listening to political discussions
(though I have learned not to believe anything I hear or read) is interesting –
but even more interesting than the articles/interviews themselves are the responses
from readers/listeners. Every article/interview
is, of course, heavily biased – which makes it fun seeing how people
respond. Balancing it out, realizing
that real truth lies somewhere toward the middle of the extremes of both sides,
I find it very interesting (and often entertaining) to read or hear the
viewpoints of people from all walks of life.

I was listening to talk radio today (with my cynical filter
on high alert), and heard the story of a couple from Mississippi who has been
taking WWII Army veterans to DC twice a year for the past three or four years. They
spoke of their many trips with these veterans and how emotional it is, and how
much it means to them to go. We heard the story earlier in the week about how
they wouldn’t be allowed to visit the memorial because of the shutdown. When they arrived, and were able to get in
despite it being closed, they were astounded that there were more guards
walking around keeping people out than there are normally guards on site when
it is open. How much more did it cost
the government to “shut it down”, than it would have cost to just keep it open?

Another caller said her parents are in France this weekend
celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. They were planning to visit the memorial at
Normandy and the cemetery where two of the caller’s great uncles were buried,
and the hospital where another great uncle was treated. The parents texted their daughter last night
telling her these places were closed. The
trip of a lifetime, to pay respect to their family members, and they didn’t get
to go.

Jan Brewer posted that she had offered to use state money to
keep the Arizona portion of the Grand Canyon open. The federal government declined her offer. Several businesses have reportedly offered to
do the same, but their offers have also been declined.

Madness.

Regarding Obamacare: I read an article earlier today that
said “They are trying to keep people from getting health care. This is the
disaster the Republicans hope to prevent by shutting down the government.”
And “The reason the Republicans
are prepared to go to the wall to stop Obamacare is simple: They are terrified
that people will get it and like it.”

Really? That’s the best they’ve got? Republicans are “trying to keep people from
getting health care”? and they are “terrified
people will like it”? Those are some of the more asinine statements I’ve heard to date.

I
believe you’d be hard pressed to find any American, regardless of party, who
would not agree that our healthcare system is broken and needs fixing. Healthcare in America is a big black
hole. Most people blame the providers
for ‘overcharging’. And there are some
who do. But the picture is so much
bigger than the cost of an office visit or an ER visit. The major players in the black hole are
Insurance Companies, and perhaps the biggest player (though his part is often
unrealized by John Q Public), is the One Call, That’s All attorney who comes
into your living room every day and night with promises to make you rich off
the negligence of someone else. Without
tort reform, this will never change. Yearly malpractice premiums could feed a
small country of starving children, and have resulted in the closed doors of
practitioners and Emergency Rooms in many places throughout the country.

Those
of us over the age of 45-50 can remember a time when, if you had three
insurance policies, and you broke your arm, you might actually end up making
money. The insurance companies cottoned
onto that and started coordinating benefits, and put a stop to that practice. Then insurance companies started dictating
what fees they would pay for certain diagnoses and procedures.

I have worked in healthcare for 37 years – in
many different capacities. My first job
as a medical assistant was in 1976, when the world was a much different
place. Doctors had time to take care of
their patients, and the receptionist didn’t have to worry about calling five
different automated phone numbers to see whether or not the patient could be
treated at their office. If a patient
needed lab tests, x-rays, or even surgery, it was scheduled, performed, and the
insurance company paid for it, far more often than not.

I’ve
done my time as a receptionist as well.
I’ve made those endless phone calls to automated numbers, left messages
for someone to call me back – while the patient sat in the waiting room for
someone behind a desk hundreds of miles away to grant or deny our
treatment. I had to hold my tongue as a
young mother screamed at me that I was prejudice against her because our office
didn’t accept Medicaid, and what was she supposed to do? Our office did accept
Medicaid for patients who met certain requirements: those who were seen in the ER when our
physicians were on service call. This
patient did not meet the criteria, and was referred to the office of the
physicians who were on call when they went to the ER. As the courteous receptionist I tried to
always be, I attempted to explain the mutually agreeable arrangement between
our office, the ER, and the other specialty providers in town, but she
continued to scream and yell. The irony
here was that (at that time) with Medicaid she could take her kids to the
doctor whenever they were sick, with very few limitations – but I, as a single
mom working my rear end off, couldn’t afford to take my child to the doctor
every time she sneezed, even though I had insurance. If not for medication samples and the
kindness of my bosses treating her when she was sick, it would have been really
tough for me. So, what I wanted to do,
instead of stand behind the window and try to calmly talk to this mom, was to
follow her out in the parking lot and scream at her, and tell her that I was a
single mom trying to take care of my child too, and for her to get off her
butt, get a job and stop depending on the government, and then I might be able
to feel a little compassion for her. But,
thankfully, my better judgment won, and I maintained my professional composure.
(And kept my job. Ha!)

Oops…
not sure how/why I got off on that tangent.
My blood pressure went up a little bit just recalling that incident.

As
a medical transcriptionist, I’ve spent many hours composing/transcribing
letters of appeal to insurance companies who have denied benefits, or pleading
with a bureaucrat behind a desk somewhere to allow a patient to have a
medically-necessary procedure/surgery.

As
accounts payable, I have seen the astronomical amount of money it takes to run
an office. Numbers are not my forte –
and those were some really big numbers!!!

As
accounts receivable, I have seen the tremendous amounts of money written off
based on the insurance companies’ “usual, reasonable, and customary” allowance.
(Don’t kid yourself. The insurance
companies are a bigger part of the problem than they will ever be the solution.)

As
collections manager, I have spoken on the phone with patients who make every effort
to pay their delinquent accounts, and also with those who couldn’t give a rip about
what they owed.

And
on the subject of “doctors charge too much”.
Lordy. I truly don’t need to get
started on that. This post is much too
long already. But I will.

Tell
me. When your loved one is in the ER
after an accident with a bone protruding through her leg, or your child has
been diagnosed with leukemia, or you have been diagnosed with a detached retina
with imminent blindness – the most important thing in the world is getting the
very best medical care available. At
that moment, money is not an issue. Life
and well-being trumps everything. Many
of us pray, but even for those of us who do, in these moments, the next miracle
worker under God is the physician, and we want the best.

Until
we get the bill. Then we are sometimes
overwhelmed, and/or outraged. Especially
when our insurance company tells us “your doctor charged too much”. Who hasn’t heard that before? Just another finger-pointing blame game. You don’t hear “we need to make a big fat profit,
so we’re only going to pay a miniscule portion your bill”, rather it’s “your
provider charged too much.”

Yeah,
your doctor “charges too much” because it doesn’t matter what he charges, most
insurance companies will only pay pennies on the dollar, so the write offs for
insured patients are huge. Then there’s
Medicare and Medicaid, whose reimbursement formulas are laughably
pathetic. The private pay patient, then,
is left with the inflated cost, with nobody setting usual, reasonable and
customary fees for him/her. Many of
these patients are hard-working, responsible people who will faithfully make
payments every month for years on end in order to clear their account. Is that fair? No, of course not. It’s part of what needs fixing. Other self-pay patients have no intention of
paying one thin dime from the minute they walk through the door. Is that fair?
No, of course not. That’s another part that needs fixing.

As
patients, we complain that the doctor wasn’t in the room with us five minutes,
never touched us, barely made eye contact, then charged us $120.00 to refill
our blood pressure medication. Maybe
that’s because for the five minutes he spends in the room with us, he must
spend at least another 10-15 minutes making sure everything is perfectly
documented, arranging for whatever testing we may need, writing a letter to our
insurance company begging for approval, reviewing prior test results before he
walks in the room, etc. There is so much
more that goes on behind the scenes that patients do not see.

Do
some doctors make a ton of money? Yes, many
of them do. And, while I have my favorites, and some
not-so-favorite, I haven’t yet met a doctor who did not deserve every penny he
ever made, and then some. There is
something wrong with people who think it is okay for an athlete (who may or may
not even have graduated high school) to
make millions of dollars every year for doing something he’d be doing for free
in the empty lot down the street anyhow – yet the man or woman who trains for
10-12 (or more) years to remove the plaque from your arteries, or re-route
those arteries so that you can live another 30 years – has to justify living in
a nice home, or driving an expensive car.
That is crazy talk. We don’t
begrudge movie stars, rock stars, country stars, or billionaire entrepreneurs
their lavish lifestyles, but the surgeon who transplants a liver into the belly
of our dying teenager has to fight with an insurance company to be paid for his
services? Again – crazy.

Nancy
Pelosi told us that we must pass the bill, so we can find out what is in
it. The article I read today said “The lack of adequate cost controls and other
problems like it are items that can be fixed once the program is in place.”

Umm..
sorry, that doesn’t offer much comfort or reassurance. Like they have “fixed” Medicare, Social
Security, and the Post Office?

I
do not like President Obama as the leader of our nation – that’s no secret. However - as I say often: I only vote
Republican because I don’t want to vote Democrat, and right now, there is no
other viable choice. Party affiliation aside - the behavior of our elected
officials is despicable.

I’ll
end this post by saying to my Democrat friends who are on board with
Obamacare: I pray you are right. I would like nothing better than for
Obamacare to be the answer to healthcare that we have long needed. I hope my concerns are for naught, and I
would love nothing more than for all of the Republican doomsday predictions to
be wrong. I would happily give credit
where credit is due. I don’t care if it’s
a donkey or an elephant. I think I speak
for many who oppose the ACA: Now that it has been forced upon us, prove us
wrong. Please.

But
in the meantime, get your act together, put on your big boy/big girl britches,
stop blaming each other, get back to work, and fix this thing.